In “The Ten Commandments,” Rameses II is about to summon a traitor before his father, Sethi. Both men, exquisitely clean-shaven, are so decorated that you have to peer past ancient Egypt’s golden finery to see their faces. Royal ladies hover near the throne, their flowing robes kissing the marble floor.
Rameses commands, “Bring the Hebrew in!”
Soldiers bring in Moses. During that seven-minute trial, he’s baked in mud, bathed in sweat, bearded, bare-chested, and bound in chains. Still, his impossibly broad shoulders are squared, he stands upright, and you can’t tear your eyes off him. He is restrained a step down from the exalted Egyptian royalty, yet he seems to tower over them. How? He’s played by Charlton Heston.
Producer-director-narrator Cecil B. DeMille already had Heston playing Moses, yet he handpicked him to voice God, as well.
From No Man’s Land to the Promised Land
Charlton (“Chuck”) Heston stood about 6 feet, 3 inches tall, but he might as well have been 7 feet tall; it’s how he looked in life, it’s how he felt on a film set, it’s how he sounded on screen or in a studio.
For a man who led thousands on screen to the Promised Land, off screen, the baby born in 1923 grew up in No Man’s Land, Illinois. He saw himself as a shy boy who relished hunting, fishing, canoeing, and reading, but who didn’t know how to drive, dance, date girls, or play team sports. That changed when he embraced theater at Northwestern University, and, later, film.
What impressed the likes of DeMille and William Wyler, who cast him in genre-defining epics? Watch 26-year-old Heston in David Bradley’s “Julius Caesar” (1950). You’ll see how his physique, and a manner wise beyond his years, won him stardom and stellar roles, including as American Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.
Despite heroic parts opposite lovely ladies, Heston wasn’t in the romantic mold. Instead of plumbing the depths of a character and revealing it in slivers, as more studied actors did, he played within his limitations and beyond his strengths. He learned sculpting and painting, and he read hundreds of Michelangelo’s letters before playing him in “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” Elsewhere, he did many of his own stunts and learned to wield swords, steer chariots, and ride camels.
Yet, to him, his envied physicality mattered only so much. His beliefs and his integrity informed most of his choices, regardless of a movie’s box office prospects or how he looked in it. He didn’t have to conjure authenticity, he breathed it into his characters.
He played underdogs, too, wrestling with, or succumbing to, powers beyond their control: New Orleans Saints quarterback Ron Catlan in “Number One,” an aging cowboy in “Will Penny,” a doomed but defiant leader in “Khartoum,” or protagonists pulverized by the threat or wake of disaster (“Airport 1975,” “Earthquake”).
Not that he enjoyed playing tragic figures, but he empathized with the idea of sacrifice, of enduring pain. It wasn’t tragedy or loss that drew him, but the stoic heroism implicit in those characters and their stories.
A Fiercely American Star
Heston called movies “an American art form.” Early on, that national pride saw him fly combat missions for the U.S. military in World War II. Post-war, as narrator for U.S. defense instructional films, he received the highest civilian clearance to access otherwise classified material.
One abiding 21st-century image of Heston is that of a defender of the right to bear arms—a crusade he saw no reason to apologize for. He didn’t feel obliged to brandish his formidable social justice credentials to make his point. He often joked that a broken nose, sustained during college football, gave him the eagle facial profile that bagged him classical roles. Perhaps that was a gentle rebuke to his critics. The eagle on the Great Seal of America grasps an olive branch all right, but arrows, too; that its head inclines toward brotherhood doesn’t mean it isn’t ready for battle.
Naturally, many forget how deeply Heston cared.
When he saw anti-Vietnam War sentiment misdirected at young American soldiers, instead of cruising the celebrity causeway (PR, entertaining troops), he flew to Vietnam and, individually, met 400 soldiers, vowing to call their wives or families when he got back. Since he’d noted names and numbers, he did just that.
Heston’s rugged individualism never blurred his social conscience. He upheld the vibrancy and longevity of the Los Angeles Music Centre, American Film Institute, National Council on the Arts, Motion Picture & TV Fund, and Screen Actors Guild. He gave more than money to causes: muscular dystrophy, the Heart Fund, and the American Cancer Society. Unsurprisingly, he earned the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for his charitable work.
When Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in Washington, Heston stood a few feet from him, having led much of Hollywood’s delegation on that march.
A Devoted Husband and Father
To Heston, rights weren’t absolute but powered by responsibilities. His moral authority flowed from living that code at home first, as a husband and father, not only as a Hollywood statesman.
He took his wife, Lydia, and children, Fraser and Holly, all over the world with him, yet they valued most the “grounded life” he gave them. Lydia, once a professional photographer, proudly declared that her pictures of him formed a fabulous record of “a man being a father.” Holly explained that the divorce of her father’s parents must have scarred him at such a young age that he must’ve sworn to correct it when his time came. He stayed married to Lydia for 64 years until his death in 2008.
Heston once mused, “It’s been suggested that I’m not a 20th-century man. … That’s true. … My career’s been spent mostly in any century but the 20th.”
On reflection, a man so steeped in American values belongs to “any century,” because at times of reckoning he knows just what to do.
Even if you’ve not seen “The Ten Commandments,” you’ll recall the Biblical image that mirrors how Heston really lived. Pharaoh’s horses, akin to self-doubt and fear, corner Moses before a stormy sea. Lesser men would buckle. But Heston stands firm and roars a reassurance, as much to himself as to anyone who’ll listen: “After this day, you shall see his chariots no more!”
Then, he raises his staff and simply parts the waters.
